Fuhrman mum in deposition for Simpson civil suit

April 29, 1996
Web posted at: 6:30 p.m. EDT

From Correspondent Charles Feldman

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Former Los Angeles police detective Mark
Fuhrman took the Fifth Amendment when questioned Monday for a
videotaped deposition in a civil suit against O.J. Simpson,
an attorney in the case said.

Fuhrman was questioned for a little more than two hours at
the clubhouse at the Twin Lake Village Resort in Rathdrum,
Idaho, near his current home.

Ed Medvene, an attorney representing the family of Ron
Goldman, told reporters afterwards that Fuhrman stood behind
the constitutional protection against self-incrimination on
virtually all questions of substance posed to him, and
indicated he would decline to answer questions as long as
there is an ongoing investigation of him in California.

Any testimony Fuhrman gives in the civil case could be used
against him in that investigation, being led by the
California attorney general's office.

The civil suit was brought against Simpson by the families of
Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.

Fuhrman, now retired, played a major role in the O.J. Simpson
murder trial. In fact, he played a role nearly equal to that
of the defendant, as Fuhrman came to be known as the man who
found "the glove."

"I looked down and I saw a dark object. I was still probably
15, 20 feet away and I kept walking closer, and then I saw
when I was a few feet away that it was a glove," he testified
in last year's preliminary hearing. He repeated that
testimony during the trial itself, but by then, Simpson's
lawyers had effectively undercut him.

Fuhrman was cast as a racist, rough cop who was out to get
Simpson and, Simpson's lawyers strongly suggested, may even
have planted key evidence. After getting Fuhrman to deny he
had ever used what was gingerly referred to as the "N word,"
Simpson's lawyers revealed they had tapes of Fuhrman using
the word in reference to black people.

The contradiction of his testimony, coupled with news that
Fuhrman had come under investigation himself for alleged acts
of police misconduct, damaged Fuhrman's credibility as one of
the prosecution's key witnesses.

In the end, when he was asked whether he had planted or
manufactured any evidence in the case, he had to assert his
Fifth Amendment privilege.

Experts say the high-profile role Fuhrman played in the
criminal trial is not likely to be repeated in the civil
suit, mainly because in the civil trial, Simpson himself will
have to take the stand -- something he did not do during the
criminal proceeding.